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Perhaps we're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
The decision leaves the door open that a university "may" continue to consider race as a "factor" in admissions. It also implied that not all affirmative action programs will pass muster with them. The court left the door wide open for future challenges to race based admissions.
Don't misunderstand me, I prefer a color blind country where people are judged solely aside from color or gender... but what the court is saying is that under certain circumstances race may be considered as a factor.
I feel it is a very narrow decision and while I disagree, I understand the position the court is in.
And extra curricular.(awards, sports but listed as generic as possible, clubs, activities) But yes. If you want to avoid any all chances of bias, make every one as generic as possible, and then accept the best or most well rounded students.
What the school and the Court do is place what they call 'the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity' above equal protection of the law.
So, despite the variety of equality laws in place, the court ruled that in fact, an institution can use race/ethnic factors to make a decision to admit someone into college or not if they did not meet the minimum requirements.
I am sure if this was reversed, meaning if it was whites getting accepted over minorities even though the whites did not meet the minimum requirements, the court would have not ruled in this way.
The court is basically stating it is ok to discriminate on the basis of race and national origin, as so long the institution can show it has "goals" it is trying to achieve, which by the way, the university does not have goals for whites or for males, just minorities and females, so whites and males will never get this special treatment from the university.
Because they don't need special treatment. They are already firmly in the majority.
Why don't y'all quit whining about a few White students who will not get into their first or second choice of schools, but who will still get into a very college and get a very good education. The poor babies.
From my pov, I think what really screwed her over is the 10% rule. That's a LOT of underperforming rural and semi-rural schools all over Texas sending their faux "top students" to flagship schools like UT Austin where they have no shot of completing college sucessfully. A 3.6 GPA from Sugarland-Houston area high school would indeed be a more academically adept student at a division I top 50 public university than say, the entirety of the high school population of the cesspool I'm currently stationed at in the mexican border for example (google San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated School district, Del Rio TX). That's not racism, that's data driven fact. Most of the administrations of these provincial mentality, remote Texas-Mexico counties don't even have college as a normative priority for their student body in the first place. If they can keep them enrolled through teen motherhood and their parental pressure to leave school for menial labor jobs, that's a win in their books. Not exactly the spirit of intent behind the 10% rule.
UT-Austin of course won't highlight the fact 6% of their freshmen attrit prior to sophomore year. Gee, surprise surprise. These are the kids who should have been at community college or the secondary Texas colleges, not swelling up the enrollment at the flagship school for the novelty of the experience. That's also enough attrition for a 3.6 from Sugarland who successfully completed college at LSU mind you, to have attended UT-Austin at in-state rates, which is in effect the charter of the school. Texas is too big a state to be using a 10% threshold for only 2 or 3 flagship schools. The second quintile of decent high schools are getting the shaft. It incentivizes mediocrity and "tactical foreclosure" behavior in choosing to purposefully transfer to mediocre schools on senior year in order to hit the top 10%.
This creates a scenario where secondary schools like UT-EP, UT-SA,TX State-San Marcos, and the like become de facto open enrollment community colleges due to lack of high-achiever interest, while the flagship schools swell up with remedials. I suppose we can be thankful that at least they're not like Florida, where getting in as an out-of-state or foreign student is 10x easier than as an in-state applicant, since they're relying on that tuition to run the education system after the retiree and transplant-laden population voted to gut education programs from the state budget after the housing bottom fell off in 2009.
So I see this as less about affirmative action, and more about grade inflation, where more challenging and better-prepared student bodies are being penalized for competing against harder peers, while the under-performing geographic bodies in the state waste freshman spots at the tune of almost 10% of the allocation every year. Meanwhile a Texas resident from Sugarland and an A average in high school has to seek a flagship campus education out-of-state. Granted, she could have accepted the concessionary offer and done her year in podunk UTEP or whatever, then taken the transfer offer to the flagship. But the principle remains, she should have been given a freshman spot at the flagship over the "10% admission" sophomore year flunkie. Just like my frustration with my 3 year tenure at Georgia Tech, a 3.0 from engineering there was like a perfect GPA at University of Central Florida, but employers don't see it that way. A 3.6 from Sugarland is more academicallty prepared than the valedictorian of Del Rio Highschool, but one gets auto admitted to UT-Austin, the other one has to go to Louisiana for a flagship freshman year experience.
So, despite the variety of equality laws in place, the court ruled that in fact, an institution can use race/ethnic factors to make a decision to admit someone into college or not if they did not meet the minimum requirements.
I am sure if this was reversed, meaning if it was whites getting accepted over minorities even though the whites did not meet the minimum requirements, the court would have not ruled in this way.
The court is basically stating it is ok to discriminate on the basis of race and national origin, as so long the institution can show it has "goals" it is trying to achieve, which by the way, the university does not have goals for whites or for males, just minorities and females, so whites and males will never get this special treatment from the university.
White was disenfranchised, undervalued and discriminated against by minorities so doing what you suggest would be all speculation... But you would like that because you would be able to ignore historical precedent...
The Texas 10% program is about as quantifiable as it gets. Basically if you are in the top 10% of your HS class, you get admitted. I do not see how it gets any more simple than that.
Diversity comes in more ways than just race, too bad you and the university do not understand this. I doubt NBA player Michael Jordan's son has much in common with a black, inner city poor person's son, yet in the eyes of you and the university, they are equal in terms of adding diversity, when in fact the poor inner city black has more in common with with a kid living in a poor trailer park outside of Waco.
If the university wants to add a selection factor that goes beyond the 10%, they need to apply it equally with regard to a protected class.
If the university wants more races besides whites and Asians, then they should concentrate resources as to why the other races are not getting into the top 10% of their class, instead of making discriminatory policies.
Yes, this is the problem with the 10% rule application to the states flagship university. If that student from the non-competitive HS cant even crack top 25% on sat's why should they be allowed to take the place of some student from plano who worked their butts off and scored in the top 10%. So the students and families who really care about education are punished for putting their kids in the most demanding high schools?
Abby may not be the best example to argue against this policy but she did go to a competitive HS and if her family had put her into a lesser HS she would have had a much better chance of making top 10%. Prior to 10% rule a huge % of entering class came from only a few school districts like plano, ft bend, katy and spring branch i think. They are not the wealthiest schools, but that is where the top students were. Now, many of those kids have to go to school out of state. And many of them will start their bright careers elsewhere.
the Oscar Meyer Turkey Bacon of Average White Women,
as Abigail Fisher is being called on social media, rest her argument on 5, yes FIVE (1 black and 4 hispanic) of the 47 applicants who got into UT in 2008 with worse credentials then she had. The five applicants she and her attorneys zeroed in on took spots from deserving students like Fisher, but they never said a word about the 42 other applicants, all white students by the way, which made her claims suspicious from the beginning.
She never said anything about the 168 black/latino applicants who had BETTER qualifications than she did, but were also denied admission into UT, which had a highly competitive admission class for 2008. (30,000 applicants for 6715 spots)
none of them attempted to sue UT over legacy admissions or any thing else, but her denial by UT had nothing to do with her white skin and red hair...it had nothing to do with her playing of the cello or her being in the math club or making the honor roll in high school..it had everything to do with her failing to make the top 10% of her class at Fort Bend Austin in Sugarland (#82 out of 674), which would have GUARANTEED her a spot at UT, A&M, UH or any state school in Texas.
this case really wasnt about Abigail Fisher anyway...she was just a pawn and a shrill being used by conservative activist Edward Blum and his donors to make Fisher the symbol of racial victimization in modern America...Blum led the charge to gut the voting rights act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Blum_(litigant)
Fisher was never harmed by not being admitted into UT..she didnt have any physical or psychological damage done to her...she went on to graduate from Louisiana State University, and she could have still been a Texas Longhorn, but she felt it was beneath her to attend UTSA, UTEP, UT Arlington or any other UT campus for her freshman year.
as for the 10% rule, parents will have to take advantage of intra district transfer rules and circumvent the situation if their child is in a highly competitive academic environment...if that means moving your child from Austin or Clements(the most competitive high school in Fort Bend ISD) and dumping them into George Bush or Hightower for a year, then such is life.
meanwhile, our good friends on twitter went HAM on Abigail Fisher with the hashtag #Beckywiththebadgrades #AverageAbby and #ByeAbigail among many others.....funny stuff
Don't be the worst white male candidates and you don't have anything to worry about. I have a hard time feeling a lot of sympathy for the students who just scrape by getting in - - you were a marginal candidate to begin with.
Hey, it could be your kid. The worst white kid accepted to UT-Austin is probably in the top quarter of his high school class at a good high school.
I was apparently not as good as the worst white kid accepted at Harvard in 1971, because I didn't get in. I've done fine.
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